Hi, my name Is Ingmar Bruder. I’m a research scientist in BASF. So BASF is the largest chemical company in the world and our business segments are plastics and performance chemicals as for example coatings or functional polymers, functional solutions, as for example construction chemicals and certainly agricultural, and oil and gas.
So in the year 2050 is expected that about nine billion people will live on this planet and most of them want to be mobile and the question is how to find a way to ensure mobility in a sustainable and a cost efficient way and one possibility could be to invent cars which drive by electric engines.
So what we’re doing in BASF is we are developing organic photovoltaics, organic solar cells, and since this is a very complex topic a lot of people from different professions have to work together for example chemists, quantum chemists and physicists.
So since we are a chemical company and we will sell materials, chemicals, in the end of the day which can be used to produce organic solar cells we need additionally partners from industry or from academia, to make systems, to make complete organic photovoltaic systems.
Traditional solar cells are made mainly out of silicon and the reason for that is that it can be processed very well, it conducts very well, and it absorbs light in the right optical range. Here in these labs, my team and myself we are developing organic photovoltaic devices and basically one of these devices you can see here and this type of solar cell was also used in the Smart forvision So the main difference between solar cells based on inorganic materials for example silicon and organic solar cells is that here dyes are used to convert light into electricity And BASF has knowledge or a lot of know-how of about over 140 years in inventing in creating new dyes and what we did here is to invent a new dye class which can convert light into electricity and the big advantages of these solar cells are that they can be produced very cheap, in a very cheap and easy way.
You can produce them in any color basically you want to have and they are transparent. So basically what you’re seeing here are different organic solar cells. You see if they’re made out of different colors different dyes and they are running a helicopter as a demonstrator but certainly this is a demonstrator and for future applications you want to power real devices and how that might look like you can see here.
So basically that’s a mobile phone charger powered by organic transparent solar cells basically here you see my blackberry and I can put it here on the charger and you can see here the clock appears which means that my blackberry is charged at the moment.
So if you want to design the perfect solar cell it should be black because certainly a black color is absorbing all the visible light However with organic solar cells we can produce any color you want to have for aesthetic reasons So if you’re buying nowadays solar cells for your house you have a guarantee that the solar cells will live for about twenty years.
They’re pretty efficient and you pay something between one euros and two euros per watt peak So what we’re doing actually here in our lab is to increase efficiency of the organic solar cells to increase the lifetime in order to catch up with existing technologies and even more important that we are developing here the production mechanism allowing us to produce our solar cells in the end of the day for much cheaper conditions So if we are talking about market entrance of organic photovoltaics we have to distinguish between different markets.
For example if you’re talking about consumer electronics there will be first products available probably in the next few years. If we’re talking about construction then the properties or the issues of the solar cells are much tougher to handle, for example we have to provide a lifetime of twenty years, we have to provide efficiencies of two digit values and this will take some more years.
So as a scientist you’re not reproducing things what other people have done before or you’re not waiting for orders. As a scientist you have to be creative, you have to be foolish and that’s how I am and therefore I like my job.
hi my name is Ingmar brooder I’m a research scientist in BSF so BSF is the largest chemical company in the world and our business segments are plastics performance chemicals as for example coatings or functional polymers functions solutions for example construction chemicals and certainly agricultural and oil and gas so near 2050 is expected that about 9 billion people will live on this planet and most of them want to be mobile and the question is how to find a way to to ensure assert mobility in a sustainable and a cost-efficient way and one possibility could be to invent cars which drive by electric engines so what we are doing in BASF is we are developing organic photovoltaics organic solar cells and since this is a very complex topic a lot of people from different professions have to work together for example chemists quantum chemist and physicist
so since we are a chemical company and we will sell materials chemicals in the end of the day which can be used to produce organic solar cells we need additionally partners from industry or from academia to make systems to make complete organic photovoltaic systems traditional solar cells are made mainly out of silicon and the reason for that is that it can be processed very well it conducts very well and it absorbs the light in the right optical range here in these labs and my team and myself we are developing organic photovoltaic devices and basically one of these devices you can see here and this type of solar cell was also used in the smart for vision you so the main difference between solar cells based on inorganic materials for example silicon and organic solar cells is that here dyes are used to convert light into electricity and BSF has knowledge or a lot of know-how off about over 140 years in inventing and creating new dyes and what we did here is to invent a new dye class which can convert light into electricity and the big advantages of these solar cells are that they can produce very cheap in a very cheap and easy way you can produce them in any color basically you want to have and they are transparent
so basically what you’re seeing here is our different organic solar cells you see they’re made out of different colors different dyes and they are running a helicopter as a demonstrator but certainly this is a demonstrator and for future applications you want to power real devices and how that might look like you can see here so basically that’s a mobile phone charger powered by organic transparent solar cells and basically here you see my blackberry and I can put it here on the charger and you can see here the clock appears which means that my blackberry is charged at the moment so if you want to design a perfect solar cell it should be black because certainly a black color is absorbing all the visible light however with organic solar cells we can produce any color you want to have for aesthetic reasons so if you’re buying nowadays solar cells for your house you have a guarantee that these solar cells will live for about 20 years they are pretty efficient and you pay something between 1 euros and 2 euros per watt-peak
so what we are doing actually here in our lab is to increase the efficiency of the organic solar cells to increase the life time in order to catch up with existing technologies and even more important that they are developing here production mechanism allowing us to to produce our solar cells in the end of the day for much cheaper conditions so if we are talking about market entrance of organic photovoltaics we have to distinguish between different markets for example if you’re talking about consumer electronics there will be first product available probably in the next few years if we are talking about construction then the de properties or the issues of the solar cells are much tougher to handle for example we have to provide a lifetime of 20 years we have to provide efficiencies of two-digit values and this will take some more years so as a scientist you are not reproducing things what other people have done before or you’re not waiting for us as a scientist you have to be creative you have to be foolish and that’s how I am and therefore I like my job you
